Your Status: You Can't Buy It

What It Really Means To Have Status

3- Your status requires everyone's participation

The reason these symbols change so easily is that none of them really mean anything, in and of themselves. Status only functions the way it does if we come to a mutual understanding about how to present and decode it. An expensive designer suit is worth drastically more than the components that went into it, and even more than another suit made of the same basic stuff. At the same time, who really even knows how much a diamond is worth, beyond the amount someone's willing to pay for it. These things communicate worth in one subculture but not in another, and you can't carry status symbols across those boundaries; a mind-blowing Gamerscore status might be significant to whomever you knifed in Modern Warfare, but will be a poor substitute for wearing something reasonable to a dinner party.

4- Wealth without class is likely to reveal your lack of status rather than obscure it

Lots of the indicators of status, then, can be bought, but not the understanding of the cultural landscape that empowers you to buy the right ones. Spending your money on a diamond-encrusted mouse or a solid-gold iPad isn't just a failure to buy your status, it's also a desperate overture that blatantly demonstrates you have none. Remember, all the visible personal cues that announce your status to the rest of the room are about command, comfort and poise, and anyone who tries to project status by crassly demanding attention is missing the point entirely. Painfully ostentatious attempts to straight-up buy your status is the consumeristic version of the same principle.